Howard Stern is continuing his SiriusXM show.
The radio icon, 71, faked out his fans while confirming that “The Howard Stern Show” is returning on Monday morning.
Following reports that Stern wasn’t returning to his show, he brought Andy Cohen on for a staged bit where he played into the rumors.
“I know you’re expecting a big announcement from Howard and this is not how things were meant to go,” Cohen 57, said, adding that it’s been a “surreal morning here.”
“There’s been a lot of talk about what’s going to happen with Howard’s deal. Is he fired? I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say, except that he’s not here and I am,” Cohen continued. “Howard was supposed to start the show today, and this was supposed to be something of a cleaner handoff. There is nothing clean about it. Here we are. I’m kind of winging it.”
The “Real Housewives” producer claimed that he was taking over the channel with his new show, “Andy 100.”
“I can’t overstate what Howard has meant to this company and what he did for SiriusXM,” Cohen said. “He walked so that we could run. I can’t possibly fill his void.”
But Stern eventually came on air and confirmed the whole thing was a joke and that he’s returning to Sirius.
“I’m going to have to fill everyone in,” Stern said, explaining that he missed last week’s shows because he was sick, and not because he was still in contract negotiations.
“I was just getting so f—ing annoyed with everyone writing me, asking me if I was okay because I’d been fired,” Stern vented.
“I’m minding my own business, enjoying my summer vacation,” he went on. “[A reporter] says that I’ve been fired for being too woke. In light of the Stephen Colbert firing — because the word on Stephen was that it was all part of this merger, and they fired Stephen because he’s too woke — the story then became ‘Howard Stern is fired because he’s too woke.’ I still don’t even know what that means.”
Stern added: “Then all of a sudden, I’m sitting home and everybody I know in my world, even peripherally, is writing me. ‘Are you okay, are you okay?. None of it is true, zero truth.”
Stern debuted his SiriusXM show in January 2006, two years after he signed with the satellite radio broadcaster.
